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Re-appraising the Subject and the Social in Western Philosophy and in Contemporary Orthodox thought

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Abstract

The notion of a constitutive lack, which formed the ambivalent initial framework of Western metaphysics, marks the contemporary attempt to think anew the social and the subject. While metaphysics had difficulties to justify ontologically the event of sociality and was tempted to construct a closed subjectivity, post-metaphysical thought by contrast justifies often the sociality of a non-identity. The presuppositions of Orthodox-Christian theology allow us to think of subjectivity and sociality in terms of a different ontology, elaborating a new synthesis between anthropology and eschatology, within which the subject can emerge as radical sociality and natal receptivity, as free and true in its very relationality. The most profound and acute intellectual demands of our present time could then meet central notions of the Orthodox-Christian heritage and point at the perspective of a new historical encounter, which enriches both traditions by mutually engaging to each others fundamental experiences

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Papagiannopoulos, I. Re-appraising the Subject and the Social in Western Philosophy and in Contemporary Orthodox thought. Stud East Eur Thought 58, 299–330 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-006-9008-1

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